Category: svhaitsma

by Susan Van Haitsma (cross-posted at her makingpeace blog at the Austin American-Statesman) 

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the greatest events in US history.  The anniversary, remembered mostly for King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered to a quarter of a million people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, will surely be invoked by Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention today.

On this day, I like to remember the primary organizer of the historic March on Washington, Bayard Rustin.  Rustin was known for his calm, meticulous, professional handling of the myriad logistics involved in getting people to and from the march in an orderly way via bus, plane, car and train from points far and near.  He also engineered security for the march, including arranging nonviolence training for security personnel, a crucial aspect given the great apprehension among government officials that violence would erupt during the event.  

The march, the largest single-day event of its kind in US history to that date, was a huge success and a major factor toward passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year. 

Bayard Rustin was not only a highly skilled organizer, he was a skilled and experienced nonviolence trainer whose influence in the US civil rights movement at crucial times, such as the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott when MLK became involved in the movement, was pivotal.  He also was a gay man who was hounded by the FBI and segregationists like Strom Thurmond, who sought to discredit Rustin in order to thwart the March on Washington. Other organizers of the march, including A. Philip Randolph, stood by Rustin, helping to prevent Thurmond’s attacks from gaining purchase.

It was good to hear US Rep. John Lewis interviewed last night at the DNC after Barack Obama had been officially nominated.  Lewis was one of the “Big Ten” who spoke along with King on that important day in 1963, and his speech was considered one of the more fiery of the day.  He asked people to “get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.”

It is not complete, but there are still people working hard – both inside government and outside in the streets – for a nonviolent revolution of values declaring that freedom from injustice also means freedom from war. 

Photo from wikipedia

By Susan Van Haitsma

OpEdNews / CommonDreams

“Integrity,” according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, was the word most frequently accessed by their readers in 2005. This bit of news has interesting implications at this particular time when another I-word is topping the list of many discussions. The report also caught my eye because “integrity” is one of two words I’ve had on my mind lately. The second, because it appears so often in print these days, is “hero.”

The definition of “integrity” I find most meaningful comes directly from the word’s Latin root, “integer,” meaning “to make whole or complete,” an origin it shares with the word “entire.” A person of integrity strives to model a life of wholeness, to integrate the practice with the preachment, the ends with the means.

“Hero” has gone from meaning “god-like” or “demigod” to becoming a term more applicable to the everyday person. Acting with exceptional courage, strength, ability and charity in certain situations, anyone might be a hero. Heroism can come and go, and it can be confused with stardom. Paradoxically, heroes often eschew the pedestal and identify more and more throughout their lives with common people through shared struggle. Instead of aiming to be gods, heroes seek wholeness and integration.

Our most well known hero of the civil rights movement was very clear about the connection between integrating people and integrating the movement’s methods with its goals. In his 1963 book, “Strength to Love,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Immoral means cannot bring moral ends, for the ends are pre-existent in the means.” The brief statement goes beyond making judgment calls about moral and immoral methods. It reveals a plainer truth that explains the movement’s commitment to nonviolence: means and ends cannot be separated. No matter what we think is right or wrong, the way we do something becomes part of the result.

Entering a local high school just before the holidays, I was pleased to see a peace sign among the seasonal decorations painted on the front doors. The image I noticed next, placed on a coffee table in the front office where I signed in, was an Army Of One recruiting display featuring a young soldier and the slogan, “Every generation has its heroes. This one is no different.”

Later that day, I heard presentations by two actual soldiers back from Iraq who indicated they didn’t feel like heroes. In fact, one of the young vets said that it hurt to be called a hero because it made him feel empty inside. “The loneliness of your self-sacrifice only grows,” he said. “I’ve been out of the Army a year and some change, but it hasn’t gotten any better. I don’t know how I can deal with this for 30 years. Talking about it helps, but I can’t ever get to specifics. Why would I tell my mom what a burning baby smells like?” His Army unit was one of the first to enter Iraq on March 20, 2003, and later he was transferred suddenly from field artillery to military police and assigned to Abu Ghraib. The divergence of ends and means, the lie that claims peace will result from war, can rend a soldier’s heart.

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, my brother-in-law, a reserve officer in the US Air Force, is scheduled to be en route to Iraq. He and I are the same age, and as a 48 year-old professional in the medical field, he believes that part of his duty as an older reservist is to provide needed leadership to younger soldiers regardless of his personal views about the war. He volunteered to go. “I didn’t stay home and hide,” he explains.

We’ve talked about his reasons for going, and his motivation jibes with what I hear from other soldiers. It has to do with brotherhood and a desire to save your brothers from death. It’s a heroic impulse that I believe our government leaders intentionally exploit by creating a maelstrom of disaster that keeps drawing in more soldiers who want to save each other.

My brother-in-law, who I love dearly, knows that I support other ways to not stay home and hide that don’t involve carrying a gun. And when I ask what I should do to support him, he says I should continue to work against war, because “the civilian politicians are the ones who stick us in it.” He is entering the maelstrom, and the only way I can think to save him is to follow that advice.

Susan Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth in Austin, Texas and can be reached at jeffjweb@sbcglobal.net

By Susan Van Haitsma

CommonDreams / IndyMedia Austin

The message printed beneath the image of the stern drill sergeant on the US Marine Corps recruitment poster reads, “Just Think of Me as Your New Guidance Counselor.” The poster is displayed in the administrative area of my neighborhood high school on the office door of the two police officers assigned to the school. The police officer who put it there says that it is not a recruitment poster and that, because he is a Marine, he uses it as motivational for himself. Just down the hall are the school’s actual guidance counselors, and one of them expresses another view about the poster. Studying the image, she says quietly, “He doesn’t look like a guidance counselor. His eyes are steely. He doesn’t look like someone who would listen.”

Drill instructors are looking toward ever-younger audiences. Among those marching in Austin’s recent Veterans Day parade, I noticed a group of Junior ROTC students who appeared to be child soldiers. I spoke later with one of them, a 6th grader who is enrolled in the program at his public middle school. I asked him what he learns in his JROTC class. “We learn how to march, and, well, we learn everything,” he said. “Everything?” I asked. “We learn how to be in the army,” he replied. Like the strange, contrary slogan, “An Army of One,” the guidance being given to this youngster pretends to offer a world of possibility, but it boils down to one direction.

The week after Veterans Day, I had an opportunity to speak with US Army Staff Sergeant, Booker T. Newton during a demonstration at his recruiting station on National Stand Down Day. Joined by other activists, parents and veterans, several CodePink women and I, dressed in pink police uniforms, issued citations to the recruiters for morality violations related to their use of deceptive recruitment practices and their roles as accomplices to an immoral war.

When Sergeant Newton learned that I was involved with Nonmilitary Options for Youth, he wanted to know what kinds of options we suggest. He was asking, he said, because more young people than usual are failing the academic tests required for enlistment, and he wonders what is happening or not happening in Texas schools to prepare students for the future. Like another Booker T. of a century ago, he was genuinely concerned about the state of public education, and although we disagreed about the best course of action, we discovered some common ground. He had guided one young person to a local AmeriCorps program that we promote. “After that, he’ll join the Army,” he said. “Or use his education award to go directly to college,” I countered, and he did not object to that possibility.

Another recruiter at the station stressed to the assembled media that he was glad we were there, because we were exercising the freedoms that he believed he was defending through his role in the military. This is the standard and puzzling response often given by spokespersons of the military, an institution that suppresses the individual freedoms of its members. We tried to demonstrate that education – guiding one another to think critically – is a foundation upon which freedom depends.

Last week, the Texas Supreme Court sidestepped an important opportunity to guide the Texas legislature toward improving a public education system that, by some standards, ranks lowest in the country. A friend, writer and educator, Greg Moses has been analyzing the situation in recent articles. He quotes some straightforward language from the Texas constitution of 1875: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” Moses concludes, “Into this succinct line of reasoning is packed a serious claim. Where there is no suitable education, there can be no real hope of preserving rights and liberties.”

The day before the Texas Supreme Court ruling that left school adequacy and equality issues unresolved, I was visiting a local high school to staff a literature table for Nonmilitary Options during the lunch periods. A fight broke out between two students in the hall near our table. My Air Force veteran colleague and I were the only older adults available at the moment the students began circling each other and putting up their fists. A crowd of students formed quickly around them. My colleague and I decided to place ourselves between the two young men and try to hold them apart. The only thing I could think to say as I held onto the shoulders of one of them was “It’s not worth it.” He would not make eye contact with me, but I sensed he would welcome a way out of the fight. Before long, school officials arrived, and a police officer grabbed the other young man, who resisted, was handcuffed and led away.

“Books Not Bombs, Conscience Not Combat,” stated the large poster above our table as a backdrop to the fight. But how can I fault those young men for doing exactly what their country guides them to do? They can see plainly enough that the USA jumps right into the ring with fists pounding when there is conflict. The president of their country clearly chooses bombs over books. Young people can see the ways that school officials promote the military at the same time that they punish students for fighting. During the course of our tabling, a teacher stopped by and told us about a recent all-faculty meeting where military recruiters gave a 20-minute power-point presentation offering assistance with discipline in the school.

Rather than more punishment and rigidity, I have to think that guidance, especially with teenagers, means trying our best to practice what we preach. Young people notice consistency. A role model who comes immediately to mind is a friend and colleague, Susan Quinlan, a former high school teacher who, along with a small group of volunteers at the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors in Oakland, California has developed a program called Alternatives to War through Education (AWE). Quinlan, a long-time war tax resister, is clear with students about her standpoint but encourages them to think for themselves and develop their own positions. Funny and creative, a natural in the classroom, she guides students through interactive exercises that help them explore and express their beliefs about killing and conscience. She also has begun an after-school class for students who are learning to organize events for their peers and facilitate presentations themselves.

Mainly, Quinlan asks questions and listens to the answers. She is accompanied in the classroom by military veterans and conscientious objectors whose very presence as former soldiers who changed their minds about war is enough to cause students to stop and take notice. Quinlan and the AWE program are much in demand. The evolving curriculum offers a form of guidance that expands the mind, allowing students to follow the twists and turns along the many paths where rights and liberties lead. Students whose views are sought and valued are bound to ask questions in return. Such as why a drill sergeant who orders strict conformity is billed as a protector of freedom, and why schools allow drill sergeants in their hallways in the first place.

——-

Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth and Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation. She can be reached at jeffjweb@sbcglobal.net. For more information about the Alternatives to War through Education (AWE) program, contact awe@objector.org

By Susan Van Haitsma

DissidentVoice

Jewel Johnson, a 79 year-old US Navy veteran, is happiest piloting a dry-land rig. His early fascination with trains led him to leave high school and work the railroad until he was drafted at age 18. After the war, he earned a GED and went on to study the ministry. He was ordained in the Methodist Church and served as pastor of Evangelical & Reformed and United Church of Christ congregations before his retirement. In the early 1990’s, Mary Johnson was diagnosed with cancer, and Jewel Johnson cared for his wife throughout her treatment. She survived.

To ease his mind during his wife’s illness, Johnson put himself to work. He took a riding mower and fashioned it into a miniature locomotive. Gradually he added cars. He painted them and called his train The Happy Day press. He painted messages on the sides of the cars – statements such as a quotation from Pope Paul VI, made at the United Nations in 1965: “War Never Again.” A carved white dove holding a wire olive branch served as the cab’s hood ornament. Johnson’s creation became known as the Peace Train.

This recent Veterans Day morning was not the first time that Johnson engineered his Peace Train up Congress Avenue toward the Texas State Capitol amid marching bands, vintage cars, girl and boy scout troops, Junior
ROTC units and various groups of uniformed vets. And it wasn’t the first time that other Veterans for Peace (VFP) members marched in the annual parade along with the Peace Train. The train was fitted with large placards that relayed to the crowd the mission of VFP, and about a dozen VFP members carried banners and distributed several hundred invitational pamphlets to onlookers and other vets in the parade. Mary Johnson, who is an associate VFP member, rode in the caboose to oversee the brakes. All along the route, the Peace Train and its Veterans for Peace crew were greeted by steady applause.

Somehow, a crowd that applauded veterans in a truck labeled, “Tin Can Sailors – Destroyer Veterans” also cheered a Navy vet driving a train declaring, “Pre-emptive Peace On All The Earth.” It’s true that the Peace
Train’s cargo elicited as many expressions of plain surprise as outright approval, but there were few frowns. Not many could resist the wave of the smiling engineer in his dapper conductor’s uniform or reject the hand-lettered messages: “Working to Make War Obsolete,” and “Justice For Veterans And Victims Of War.”

Jewel and Mary Johnson have long been active supporters of Veterans for Peace, and they also are members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the United Nations Association. They take part in local or national meetings of these organizations as well as their denominational gatherings. When he was in the Pacific just after the atomic bombing, Johnson was part of a patrol that went ashore at Hiroshima to pick up American prisoners of war. At one point while he was walking through what was left of the city, a Japanese citizen offered him a tangerine. It was a humane gesture in the midst of horror that he never forgot.

The Johnsons don’t stop with Veterans Day; they take the Peace Train to holiday parades in small towns all around Central Texas. Children love it and instinctively climb aboard. Having served as pastor in a small
Texas town, Johnson understands the population, while he firmly speaks his mind. He frequently writes letters to the editor of his newspaper, expressing frankly and respectfully his views on war from a Christian perspective. Where he and his train go, he proudly introduces himself as a Veteran for Peace. On the side of the Peace Train cab is lettered, “I Thought I Could.”

Jewel and Mary Johnson are diminutive, quiet people who act boldly and creatively. They know what war does and what it looks like. The Peace Train carries a sign reading, “Justice For All Victims Of Agent Orange
And Depleted Uranium.” The Johnsons know that their VFP chapter is named for a much beloved Vietnam veteran who died too young of liver cancer that was attributed to his exposure to Agent Orange. And they know that the youngest vet carrying the VFP banner ahead of the Peace Train this Veterans Day, their new chapter co-chair, risked DU exposure during his tour in Iraq. The Happy Day Express carries these burdens and displays them for all to see. Its crew knows that peace is a train that moves forward only when it is
powered by the engine of truth.

—–

Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth, Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation, and is an associate member of the Neil Bischoff Chapter 66 of Veterans for Peace.